iNational Portrait GalleryWest End
Tim Walker's Fairyland: Love and Legends
Photographer Tim Walker celebrates the UK's LGBTQ+ trailblazers in a fantastical exploration of queer identity, community and love.
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Walker asked his sitters to bring an object that mattered to them. Jane Cholmeley holds the original sign from Silver Moon Women's Bookshop. Isaac Julien holds a conch shell from his 1989 film Looking for Langston. In Ian McKellen's portrait, a tangle of hands spells out LOVE in front of him.
You walk in past a replica of the plaque for Britain's first gay rights demonstration, then into 250 portraits of queer people and their allies. The first room dresses Gay Liberation Front and Stonewall founders as Holbein's Tudors, the "queeristocracy". Then come the Rebel Dykes, the HIV/AIDS years, and fashion, drag and performance.
Time Out gave it three stars: its critic found the celebrity portraits on plain grey dull, and called the final room of erotic scenes "mad, intricate and fabulous". That room has a signposted explicit area not recommended for under-18s. The show is on the ground floor. Standard tickets are £25, booking is required, and the Gallery stays open until 21:00 on Fridays and Saturdays.
Editor's pick
Tim Walker, the fashion photographer of giant props and painted backdrops, casts Britain's LGBTQ+ trailblazers as fairies and figures from legend. One sitter poses as a flower fairy, blue blooms at his feet and a bee beside him.
Look for
The Silver Moon shop sign
Look for Jane Cholmeley holding the original sign of the women's bookshop she co-founded in 1984.
Ian McKellen, Love
Hands knot together in front of him to form the letters of the title.
The Rebel Dykes room
Large portraits modelled on Karlheinz Weinberger's 1960s biker photos sit at the centre of the show, with a short film of the women talking about their campaigns.
The Glitter Queens
Paul O'Grady and Julian Clary in a rococo tableau, attended by three Glitter Boys.
The HIV/AIDS section
Nurses and the people who developed treatments hang beside Marc Almond, Holly Johnson and Jimmy Somerville; Walker wanted to "bring that disco to the ward".
Good for
- Evening Visits
- First-Timers
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want Walker's giant fantasy sets: Time Out found most portraits are celebrities on plain grey.
With kids
The Gallery flags adult themes, nudity and sexual images throughout; under-14s must be with an adult, and the final room's explicit section isn't recommended for under-18s. Visitors aged 25 and under get £5 tickets through the free CLUB NPG.
Free in the same building
- Contemporary Portraits and PhotographyNewly commissioned portraits, diverse contemporary voices, and the gallery's collection of 21st-century photography on Floor 0.
- Georgians and Victorians: 1714–1900Writers, scientists, soldiers, and reformers: Reynolds, Gainsborough, and photography's pioneers capture Britain in transition.
- Tudors and Stuarts: 1485–1714Holbein's Henry VIII, Elizabeth I in her Armada Portrait, and the Stuart monarchs: six centuries of power on canvas.
- Twentieth Century: 1900–2000From Suffragettes to Swinging Sixties: Warhol-era photography, Hockney's self-portraits, and the faces of modern Britain.
Also at National Portrait Gallery
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Image credits
9
- Tim Walker's Fairyland: Love and LegendsCourtesy of National Portrait Gallery
- Renoir and LoveCourtesy of National Gallery
- Yinka Shonibare and Thomas Gainsborough: A ConversationCourtesy of National Gallery
- Art deco: the golden age of poster designCourtesy of London Transport Museum
- National Portrait GalleryIstvánka / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- National GalleryCarlos Delgado / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- London Transport MuseumColin Park / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Courtauld GalleryAnthony O'Neil / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Churchill War RoomsJenny Poole / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0